This invention relates to marking devices, and more particularly to automatically operated, electrically controlled devices for marking livestock and other articles having differing dimensions.
Prior art marking of livestock and other articles is known. Holt U.S. Pat. No. 2,126,777 And Ker U.S. Pat. No. 1,851,672 disclose devices for tattooing animals at various anatomical locations. Both patents disclose manually operated tattooing tools for interchangeable tattoo or type-blocks.
McKee et al U.S. Pat. No. 1,807,631 discloses an apparatus for branding articles such as sides of bacon. The articles to be branded pass through the device, between vertical rollers 25 and a presser roller 26, and frictionally engage a branding wheel, or marking roller, 6. The branding wheel is consequently rotated, and its needles 11 are inked by an ink brush 10 prior to marking the article.
None of these devices, however, automatically adjust for different sizes of articles to be marked so that the marking head contacts such articles uniformly. Nor do the prior art devices include automatic means for sensing the presence of livestock, or other articles, in the marking area, thus to operate control devices for activating the marking head.
Thus, the prior art does not provide structures for automatically adjusting the position of a marking head to mark livestock of varying sizes, and requires manual operation of the marking device in order to brand, tattoo, or otherwise mark an article. No devices are disclosed for guiding livestock or other articles to a marking area, adjusting the marking head for the size of the article to be marked, sensing the presence of the article at the marking station, and appropriately marking or tattooing the article.